


Just What You're Worth

by jilyandbambi



Category: Scandal (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Black Women Are Allowed To Not Be Okay, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:36:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28656597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jilyandbambi/pseuds/jilyandbambi
Summary: In which, the president learns about Defiance before his first State of the Union address and, funnily enough, isn't too keen on simply letting his Communications Director walk out of his life forever.AU from pre-S1, onward.
Relationships: Fitzgerald Grant/Olivia Pope
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Just What You're Worth

**NOW**

_District Ballroom, The Mayflower Hotel, Washington D.C.  
_ _March, 2012_

* * *

  
The First Lady had been invited to give the opening remarks ahead of main presenter, Senator Susan Ross. It went without saying that theplanning committee had bestowed the honor onto Mrs. Grant under the assumption that she and the president were attending the Mayflower Gala this year to secure an early endorsement from Senator Ross, should she earn re-election, and Rebuild America, the non-partisan policy group that’s hosted this event every year since 1991. As it happened, President Grant had yet to announce his intent to seek re-election; though it was technically still early enough in his first term for his decision to go either way, only two other people besides the president himself knew his final decision on the matter had long since been made. Per that arrangement, tonight, Mellie was set to take her first steps.

Behind the curtain, in the wings of the makeshift stage, Olivia watched from the sidelines as Harrison ran Mellie through a speedy, last-minute prep before it was time for Mellie to go on.

“Okay, thirty seconds to showtime. You’ve given a million speeches like this so, again, the main thing is to tone down the ‘Good American Housewife’, persona without going full HBIC ‘cause it still isn’t your stage yet. You wanna hit that sweet spot between Thatcher & Hilary Rodham, competent but non-threatening…”

Olivia let the rest of Harrison’s speech fade into the background of the din, laughing to herself that after weeks of their team working this pro-bono side project for the FLOTUS, Harrison still hadn’t found a comfortable way to address Mellie. Harrison being Harrison wasn’t about to call anyone ‘ma’am’, ‘Mrs. Grant’ was likewise too formal, but being on a first-name basis with the “actual _First Lady_ of the _United States_ ” felt too awkward, despite Olivia and Mellie’s insistence that doing so was preferred.

Leaning back into a half-sitting position against the conveniently-placed coat table, Olivia allowed herself a second to breathe, a sharp, deep intake through her nose that was then squeezed out the same way it came, but slowly, deliberately so as not to make it look like she was hyperventilating. She hurt. Everywhere. She’d gotten up with an ache in her lower back. Assuming it was from sleeping in an awkward position she’d tried to soothe it away with some early morning yoga, and when that had ended with her vomiting bile onto her living room floor, Olivia had done something practically unheard of and had taken the morning off, and crawled into bed with a hot water bottle. By the afternoon, the pain had spread to her hips and thighs, and Olivia had half a mind to spend the rest of her life in bed if that’s what it took; but it was today, and today was tonight. She and her team had been working toward tonight for weeks now, and Mellie had been working toward it for much, much longer. Tonight was owed; to the team, to Mellie, to Fitz, to _FitzAndOlivia,_ though that last part was silent. The show, as they say, must go on.

Six hours, six ibuprofen, and a pair of three-inch Louboutins later, the lower half of Olivia’s body felt ready to twist itself off and leave the rest of her propped against the table. Weeks ago, she had had Harrison and Abby’s names put on the guest list for tonight so they’d be with her as buffers against Mellie and against Fitz, in case he couldn’t control himself. Hindsight being what it was, Olivia now knew she owed her past self an apology for how she’d berated her for being so cowardly. Now, with not one but two extra representatives from OPA there, it wouldn’t look so unprofessional, so suspicious, if the third member—and boss—cut a swift exit right after the evening’s opening remarks, before the evening really got underway, before Fitz could sneak away to come find her.

“Eat.”

Pulling a face, Olivia batted away the skewered cube of meat Abby had just waved in front of her face. Undeterred, Abby fetched the discarded skewer off the ground with a napkin and casually claimed the spot next to Olivia, half-sitting against the table. In her hand she held a small plate filled with a sampling of every hors d’oeuvres being offered that night.

“Anything else suit your fancy? We got your stuffed mushroom, your tuna and steak tatare, and, of course, the crowd favorites, grapes, cheddar cheese, and _olives_!” Abby waved the plate before Olivia, half-enticing, half-pleading, to accompany the sing-song voice she shifted to midway, a mother trying to get her toddler to finish their brussel sprouts. “C’mon, Liv, you gotta eat something.”

“Cut it out, Abby,” Olivia said, physically pushing the plate as far from her as her arm would stretch. With her other hand, she covered her mouth and nose. “I told you I was sick this morning. Get that stuff away from me.”

“You said you had cramps,” Abby pointed out in a quieter voice. “Not that your stomach was bothering you.”

By now, with the number of secrets and half-truths she shared, dealt in, was the subject of, or any combination therein on any given day, Olivia felt like keeping up with the fractal mindmap of Who Knows What where it concerned her world should be easier than falling asleep, and yet.

Olivia looked away, out onto the stage, where a preening Mellie was waiting for the applause to die down for her to begin her speech. The questions on Abby’s tongue bore a hole in the back of her head, when Olivia finally turned back the concerned frown and proffered plate of food were there to meet her. With her free hand, Abby reached out and touched her arm.

“You look flushed,” she said in a slow voice. Her hand curled around Olivia’s arm and Olivia’s ears began to ring. “Are you hot right now? You feel—“

“—I’m fine.” Making a grab for the plate of hors d’oeuvres, Olivia plucked a toothpick at random and popped whatever was on the end into her mouth. She cocked her head at Abby in a _See?_ motion that was ruined when the hand holding the bare toothpick became too heavy and flopped down at her side, the toothpick clattering to the floor almost in slow motion.

With her other hand she bent to reach—lips parting, _I’ll get it_ —the rest of her mouth wouldn’t work, her legs fell apart and disappeared into the open floor and she was _sinking_

“ _LIV!_ “

**THEN**

_April, 2011_

* * *

Olivia’s resignation letter is the gut punch that knocks Fitz back into himself, finally. It all happens fast, a series of bright, white flashes, sans the clicking of a camera. He’s before his agents, leading them through the corridors of the Residence, then _flash_ , and he’s in the backseat of an unmarked car, pulling out into late-night D.C. traffic. He doesn’t hear himself tell Hal and Tom they were going for a ride. He doesn’t hear himself give them the address. He reads the letter, and his vision goes white, and the whole world explodes around him, and he’s thrown; and all he hears is _You are not the President. You are not the President. You are not. The President._

_You’re spoiled, pampered, naive, but you’re not stupid._

Verna was wrong and dead. Dead wrong. Earlier that day, Fitz had gone to visit her and found out she had ordered the assassin’s bullet that had, a month ago, grazed his shoulder instead of going through his head. His would-be Supreme Court nominee, trying to right a wrong from her deathbed.

Fitz doesn’t see himself arrive at Olivia’s door or register his own furious knocks until he hears the muffled footsteps on the other side, rushing up to meet him. She throws the door open.

“What—?!”

Her lips are still forming the word when she stops, mid-tirade. Her face shifts from anger, to frazzled, to shock. She tries to pull up her guard again, but fails and her expression settles on tender. Whoever she may have been expecting to find pounding on her door at this hour, it couldn’t have been him. He’d never been to her place before. He’s thrown her. She softens.

“Hi.”

“ _The hell is this?_ ” Fitz grits out through clenched teeth, thrusting in her face the letter, her letter, that he’d only remembered-realized he had been carrying this whole time.

Olivia steps back and opens the door wider, inviting him in. He follows her in, leaving the two agents flanking him on the other side in the hall.

Her television is on, whatever channel she was watching was still playing highlights from his State of the Union speech, the one he’d given hours ago, the one he barely remembered giving, the whole thing feeling like an out of body experience; like watching himself address the nation, the sound of his own voice coming in and out, static-y and out of sync: _You are not the president._

Olivia pries the letter from him gently and sets it on the coffee table. When she pulls up to face him again she has her hands out in front of her, readying to diffuse the bomb, to placate him, to soothe, to fix.

“What did you get?” Fitz asks before she can speak. Without giving her a chance to answer, he goes on. “Mellie got to be First Lady. Cyrus is Chief of Staff. Verna would’ve been my Supreme Court pick if not for the cancer…”

He trails off, watching as Olivia’s eyes widen and her mouth falls open as she catches on that he’s telling her he knows, and her expression again flits through every feeling at once.

“Hollis’ shares stay up and his lobbyists are happy,” Fitz cuts himself off and laughs bitterly, hopelessly. “What about you, Liv, huh? What was your piece of the pie?”

She looks away, finally. It’s not enough.

“I’m not so naive to think it was me,” he went on. “Clearly it wasn’t becoming Communications Director.”

His eyes flit to the letter still on the coffee table and the shame coursing through the eyes she won’t allow to meet his anymore. A horrible thought passes through him and sinks to the bottom of his stomach.

“Did—Did they pay you, to—“

She slaps him. Hard. It’s not undeserved. He could have learned the truth about his election and the part she played in it on any other day, and not have asked her point-blank if his wife and the people closest to him had paid her to seduce him, to keep him out of the loop. He could have left that stone unturned today, any other day, except in addition to learning from Verna that he wasn’t the president, he’d also learnt she’d tried to have him killed. He was going to put his friend on the Supreme Court, and she’d tried to have him assassinated so she could wipe it off her conscience before she died. Olivia slaps him. She deserves to. But Fitz had to know.

“You told me you loved me.” His voice cracks on the word that hurts the most. He shudders, his breaths painful and ragged. He’s not steady when he speaks up again. “You didn’t have to do that. You didn’t. You could’ve just—If it was all to—“

“—It wasn’t!” Olivia shouts. She’s turned her face back up to look at him now, brown eyes glassy and full, pained and plaintive. “I wasn’t—we weren’t—It wasn’t a game for me, for us. We weren’t playing you—“

“No,” Fitz scowls. “You were fixing me. Handling me.”

“We believed in you.”

“Verna said the same thing,” he scoffs, remembering the dying woman looking down on him from her sickbed. Spoiled, she'd called him, naive, pampered. Oblivious. Simple. Worthless.

“I wanted you to have—“ Olivia starts then stops, and takes a shuddering breath. “I didn’t say that—that I love you to trick you. I didn’t agree to rig Defiance until the end. I was the last to agree, and I did it because I love you, and after your father died I wanted—you were so—it was wrong, I know it was. But I wasn’t promised anything, if you don’t believe anything I say or have said to you since we’ve met, please believe that.”

She waits, Fitz says nothing. It’s all so much to take in, to believe. Wrapping her arms around herself, Olivia looks away again and continues.

“You left your pin behind. At the National Archives.”

Deflection is among the more deadly defense mechanisms in Olivia Pope’s arsenal, but oblique non-sequiturs aren’t her style. She’s going somewhere with this. In no mood to twist and pull it out of her, Fitz rocks back on his heels and lets her take the scenic route.

“Hal was on duty that day, he was with us. He found it and gave it to Mellie.” Pausing to let out another half-silent shudder, she rolls her shoulders back and straightens up to lock eyes with him. “She gave it to me earlier today, and told me to be sure you got it back.”

Oh.

“I left it with the letter,” she says in a small voice.

To be honest, he hadn’t even noticed it there.

“I left it on my desk, I think.” At her hurt look, he explains. “It was all a blur, when I found your letter. I came straight here. I don’t even remember telling Secret Service where we were going…”

Olivia cuts across his half-remembered account of the last hour as it trails off. 

“Mellie knows about us.”

Olivia isn’t one to state the obvious. When she takes you by the hand to lead you to the point it’s done with purpose, to point you in the direction of the truth behind the truth. Fitz isn’t able to find it here and now because surely this has been evident to all parties involved since the campaign trail…

“Of course she does.”

He watches Olivia’s face crack and then go blank almost in slow motion and knows instantly he made a misstep, that this time their places in “the know” were inverted. If it’s one thing Olivia Pope absolutely cannot bear it’s being caught off guard, especially when she’d convinced herself she had all the pieces. She clamps a hand over her mouth, agape in mortification and, more guilt than before, beautiful brown eyes once again glassy and impossibly huge. This is perhaps the most unguarded, the most raw Fitz has ever seen her, if only he weren’t still so completely furious with her, with everyone, Fitz would sit back and appreciate the rare treat of her opening herself for him, to him, letting him see her come open and apart before she inevitably sealed herself away again. Instead, he pounces.

“She invited herself along to ‘dinner’ at your cabin,” he sneers, the end of a bitter laugh add injury to insult. “Camp David, remember? You think that wasn’t on purpose. The campaign trail? All those she stormed off and let you deal with me, convince me to go along with whatever play you, she, and Cyrus had cooked up that day? You’re too smart to have not seen the game, Livvie. For God’s sake, the woman faked a miscarriage to give us a boost in the polls! Do you honestly think she cared about loaning her husband out to his campaign advisor so long as it got her where she wanted to be?”

Stricken, Olivia backs away from his tirade. Folding her arms protectively across her chest, she shutters herself, turning contemplative as she tries to tamper down the tremors that have started to overtake her slight form.

“The trip to the National Archives,” she says, more to herself than him. “That got her. That, she cared about.”

“What that woman does or doesn’t want, or does or doesn’t care about changes like her drink of choice. I can’t keep up, I’ve stopped caring a long time ago. I’m done giving a damn about what Mellie wants.” Fitz took a half step closer to Olivia. “Or Cyrus, for that matter.” Then another. “Or Hollis.”

Another, and he has her backed into the wall, all of him bearing down on her. Locking eyes with her as he gauges her reaction, he says, “Verna tried to have me killed. She told me when I went to see her today. Remember that assassination attempt on me after I confirmed Sally’s pick for the Court? Verna apparently had it on her heart to right one last wrong before she died by trying to take me with her.”

A noise escaped Olivia that was something between a gasp, a sob, and an abortive attempt to smother both at once. Tears stream down her face. One of them moved before the other, Fitz wasn’t sure who, but the kiss is hard, greedy, and brief, and over when he physically throws Olivia back with the hands that were only just cradling her tearstained face. She falls back and braces herself against the wall, hands splayed to balance her. Reeling, and open, and hurt; no moves left, she gives him a wide berth and waits.

Impulse is what brought Fitz here, to her apartment, to her. There had been no plan, no script to follow. Up until this point there hadn’t needed to be. But they were now at a crossroads. He could leave now, and what has already been said between them tonight will in all likelihood be all that will have ever been said, forever. She’ll see him out of her life forever and that’ll be that. Speak now or hold your peace.

“I’m going to resign,” he says as soon as he thinks it. Olivia’s eyes are dry, she looks about ready to slap him again. So be it.

Now that he knows the truth no just about his presidency but about the people with whom he now has to see his term through. Years spent in this profession has made him at least comfortable amongst liars and cheaters and criminals and sycophants. At times, he is one himself. But meeting Olivia, being with Olivia, being in it together with Olivia—for as long as that had been true—had made the prospect of going back to before, unbearable.

She pulls herself up, jaw set, and blazing to tear him a new one, but Fitz won’t hear it. Not today.

“I can’t do it,” he says plainly. “I could have, maybe, if I didn’t know about Defiance, I could’ve sucked it up and taken your resignation and you leaving me but all of it together is too much. The thought of having to go back and spend the next four years—eight, if Mellie and Cyrus get their way, and we both know they’ll go to any lengths to—“ He stops, chokes back a groan and the urge to stamp his foot at the unfairness and indignity of it all. “I know what I am, who I am. What I was born into. I get all that. But my life has never been my own! All day, every day, all the time, people tell me what I should want, what I should be aiming for, what my dreams are, what I was born to do. They tell me what to do, what to say, who I need to be for them, for America, for the greater good. They dress me up and pull my strings and rig elections to I can reach the esoteric crescendo of greatness they write in their heads as soon as they hear my name; my father, Cyrus, Mellie, Hollis, Verna…

“But you, Liv, _I thought you saw me_ ,” he grits out, a low, almost-growl, exposed and bleeding now having finally landed on the rub.

Olivia balks. “I did see you. I _do_ see you—“

“You don’t,” Fitz shot back, anguish and bitterness swelling up the more he goes on. “I was another thing you had to fix, a ‘situation’ to handle. I have enough handlers and fixers, that’s all I am to Cyrus and Mellie and every other person in that big, white prison cell _none of you_ had enough faith in me to let me earn; something to mold and control, a means to an end. Irony of ironies, it was meeting you, _loving you,_ the fixer, that made me realize what I was missing was a partner.”

Cupping the sides of Olivia’s face in both hands, he bows his head low, joining their foreheads and lips. The pads of his thumbs traced the streaks left by her tears.

“I’ve been done with fixers for a while now, Livvie, I needed a partner,” he murmurs against her lips. “I _want_ a partner.”

Olivia’s mouth opens, but Fitz isn’t done.

“It isn’t fair,” he whispers harshly as the anger begins to mount again. “Everyone _except_ me got what they wanted out of your little conspiracy. Why is that?”

Olivia doesn’t have an answer. She pulls him down, brings their lips together, and it ignites him.

Their lips still fused, he has her in his arms, using the wall behind her as leverage, holding her up as her legs part in anticipation and his free hand travels up the skirt of her dress. He yanks her panties down so hard they rip, and she breaks the kiss when she hears the fabric tear. She hates it when he ruins her clothes in the heat of the moment, but Fitz is in no mood to abide her. He captures her lips in another searing kiss, devouring her moans as he brings them down, down onto the hardwood floor.

They land with her splayed, legs parted, the skirt of her dress hitched up, her bare and exposed, and he eager to taste her. He took his time kissing his way down her navel, savoring the tremors that rolled through her taut belly in time with her shivering gasps of pleasure. He found her core with a kiss, feeling the after-effects of the shockwave that drew another breathy moan from Olivia’s perfect lips and made her thighs flutter up, briefly trapping his head between them before he pushed them back down, pinning them with both hands while his tongue went to work.

With lips and tongue he worked his way up and down, in and out switching between her clip and her folds, teasing whimpers from her with every flick of his tongue, while his hands moved from her thighs up to fondle her breasts through the bodice of her dress. Fumbling blindly, he popped the buttons along the front and, upon the discovery that she’d chosen to wear a bra that clasped in front, took her clit in his mouth to reward her, laving it with the flat of his tongue, and taking her over the edge for the first time.

Pulling himself up on his forearms, Fitz pauses midway up her body to take in the sight of her, momentarily spent, splayed, the bodice of her dress all but torn off her slight frame, barely hanging on at the shoulders, her breasts exposed and heaving as she came down from the high of orgasm. He wastes no time undoing the belt of his slacks, freeing his cock in time to take her again before she comes back down to earth.

He’s rough with her this time around. A kind of belated frenzy takes hold of him, and he fucks into her with the remains of his anger, his shame, his hurt, her betrayal; pain-pleasure she takes with a long, gritted keening. It’s a sound she’s never made for him and he has to have it again. There’s no giving her time to adjust to the size of him before he pulls out and drives back in, then again, and again, pinning her arms above her at the wrist as he fucks into her with brutal pace and precision; the sounds it wrings from her driving him to take more, more, more.

He claims her lips in another bruising kiss, letting her taste herself before moving down to attack her neck, nipping and sucking in all the conspicuous places that’ll be that much harder to cover with a scarf or makeup. It says a lot for how far gone she is that she can’t scold or redirect his attentions. He’s moved down to her breasts, kneading and teasing one with his hand, and rolling the nipple of the other between his tongue and teeth, when his vision whites out and the world around him explodes for the final time that day, and he collapses on Olivia’s prone body, spent.

She doesn’t move an inch when Fitz rolls off her. Half-lidded eyes and ragged breathing are the only tells that she’s even still conscious. Taking her in for the last time that night, he can already see the souvenirs he left her beginning to form across her previously unblemished skin, bite marks and bruises that will span the entire length of her, from her wrists, her neck and shoulders, her breasts, on down to her thighs and the most sensitive parts of her. The thought of it is enough to make him hard all over again. But tonight has been enough.

Getting to his feet, Fitz goes about redoing his fly and belt, using the mirror on the adjacent wall to check himself over, so as not to be too obvious to the agents waiting outside by the hall elevator. He’s on his way to the door when, on impulse, he looked over his shoulder in the direction of the living area, for some reason expecting to see Olivia settled on the loveseat, back to watching CNN. But then he remembers, he left her on the floor.

He left her laid out on the floor, and she hadn’t moved.

There have been plenty of times in the course of their relationship where, in the afterglow of a particularly intense round of lovemaking, either one or both of them have been so spent they’ve immediately drifted off in whatever position they came in, in a matter of speaking. But this is the floor that he’d left Liv on. Taking her roughly on the floor of her apartment in the heat of a desperate, rage-fueled fuck was one thing; dusting himself off and leaving her there splayed out all mussed and torn would be cheap and seedy, would make her—them—into something they weren’t. A punishment fuck—if that’s what you wanted to call it—and, now that the white hot rage he’d come here with had for the time being, simmered down to embers, at least where Olivia was concerned—Fitz wasn’t sure he did, want to call it that, that is—he thinks would only be degrading if he left her like this, half-naked on the cold, hardwood floor, shivering.

Shivering, Fitz realizes as he bends down to check if she’s awake. Not snoring—of course it isn’t, Olivia doesn’t snore. She’s awake, her eyes are squeezed too tightly to be shut in sleep. They pop open when she feels Fitz’s arms dip between her and the floor, scooping her up, her own winding around his neck.

In the back of his mind, there’s a blaring, neon arrow pointing at the fact that Olivia had allowed him to fuck her into the floor of her home and nearly leave her there, wrecked and shivering like roadkill, that had he not turned back she would have let him walk out on her, leave her like that, like trash, like a two-dollar whore (like a mistress), and wouldn’t have uttered a word of protest. _Olivia Pope_ would have let herself be degraded by him (by _anyone_ , didn’t matter). For now, Fitz let the lights in the arrow fizzle out, he’ll get to them later. It was a long day for Olivia, too; longer, after he’d shown up here and hurled at her feet the wreckage of the missiles dropped on him not twelve hours ago.

He brings Olivia to her neatly-made bed, settling her up against the pillows. Her apartment is a nice size but it has a standard layout. Fitz makes an educated guess as to where her linen closet is and is right on the first try. He takes a washcloth and a hand towel, then heads into the bathroom where he runs the washcloth under the hot water tap in the sink. Wringing the washcloth out, he bundles it in the hand towel to keep it warm.

Coming back into the bedroom, he finds Olivia now propped against a small mound of pillows, legs out straight in front of her, crossed at the ankles, her brown eyes following him silently as he moved about her space. Taking a seat at her side, Fitz unrolled the warm washcloth from the towel, and with it in one hand, used his other to ever so gently coax her legs apart to start at the top. 

The noise that came from Olivia when the cloth made contact with the skin of her inner thigh made Fitz jump; too soft to be sob, too full to call a whimper, and quickly muffled by the fist pressed to her mouth. It made him ache. Pulling back, startled and a little embarrassed he tried to find the words to ask if this was okay. Hooded eyes seemed to read the question from his face and posture, and she nodded, with vigor even as tears once again began to stream down her cheeks. Behind her fist he could see her mouth twitching upward into a grin.

He finished that leg, then did the other, stopping in between to run the washcloth under the hot water again when it started to get too cool. He took special care when it was time to do the space between her legs, dabbing as lightly as he dared so as not to upset any swelling. After drying her off with the towel, he tossed the linens inside the hamper he found in her bathroom. Olivia’s eyes were still trained on Fitz when he came back in, this time to look for pajamas. It didn’t take long to find the right drawer of her dresser, and obviously would have been easier to simply ask, but for some reason the quiet felt right.

The dark blue nightshirt he chose was worn but felt the right kind of soft the way old, well-loved articles of clothing did, the collar frayed and stretched out, and it had Tweety Bird on it, which was just too freaking cute. No one who knew her would guess that Olivia Pope would have anything like this in her wardrobe.

Olivia is still in tears when he brings the shirt over and helps her out of her dress. She barely seems to register the nightshirt he picked out, or that she’s being changed into it. Fitz has to pull her arms and head through the sleeves and neck himself.

Then she reaches for him, timidly, with both hands, before stopping herself, looking stricken with both arms half-stretched in mid-air, as though waiting to be swatted back. Fitz can’t help but consider how young she seems in that moment. Olivia Pope is never so fragile, except when she is.

The floodgates open when he pulls her into his lap, her sobs bitter, heavy, almost guttural as she hides her face in his shoulder. He holds her through it, rubbing her back while shushing her. Oh how the tables have turned, he tries not to think. He loses track of time with her in his arms like that, until she goes quiet again. Her voice is ragged and choked when she speaks at last.

“I made a mistake.”

He doesn’t ask for clarity. Nor does he say ‘I know,’ or ‘It’ll be okay,’ or ‘I forgive you.’ Any variation is out of Fitz’s reach for the moment. Instead, he kisses the side of her neck, her cheeks, pulls her tighter.

“Don’t leave me. Please, if you love me, if—“

“—I do. Don’t ever think—“

“Don’t leave me.”

“Okay.”

It’s enough. The details, the how’s and when’s and where’s they’ll work out between them as they go. Going back to his wife, to working with Cyrus, knowing what he knows and having to pretend to still be in the dark would have been unbearable, unsurvivable, if he didn’t have Olivia. They were in this together. Everything else would fall into place eventually, he's sure of it.

Sniffling, Olivia pulls away, moving out of his lap and getting to her feet. She takes him by the hand and pulls him up with her.

“It’s late. You’ve got that call with the German chancellor tomorrow morning, remember?”

Fitz lets her lead him by the hand to the door. Before she unlocks it, he bends down to capture her lips in one last, long kiss. They share one last, lingering look between them as he heads out the door. The sound if it closing behind him echoes off the walls of the empty hallway as Fitz makes his way down to the elevator where Tom and Hal are waiting.

**NOW**

* * *

****

Abby is oh so grateful she and Harrison were able to successfully peer pressure Olivia into putting them both on the list for tonight. Ironically, though Abby herself is the mastermind and main architect of ‘Operation LISP’, as the team—sans Olivia, obviously—have dubbed it, she doesn’t yet share Harrison (and Olivia)’s ability to compartmentalize and shift into triage mode in the early stages of a crisis regardless of whether a loved one is involved. As the head of their contingency plan, however, Abby had, of course, anticipated her propensity toward neurosis, and let Harrison take crowd control. The bases are loaded much sonner than any of them had been expecting but when Liv goes down, they slide into place with barely a look between them.

Abby pulls out her phone an opens the relevant text chain to let the rest of the team know it’s time to rally:

_Wendy’s aboard the Jolly Roger_

Huck, naturally is the first to respond: _?_

Her phone chirps twice with a double-text from Quinn.

Quinn: _WTF_

Quinn: _NOW??? Do I have the codes mixed up??_

Annoyed, Abby types:

_Yes, NOW, Lyndsey. EMTs r on thr way. I’m having them take us 2 GW. Call Patrick. Tell him 2 hav evrythng ready. Game faces, people!_

Checking Liv’s pulse with her free hand, Abby relays the information to Harrison, who, in accordance with the plan, got to his phone before any of the lookie-Lous could theirs. Onlookers who see a nascent problem being handled are more likely to go about their business. Olivia Pope is a known entity amongst the half-dozen or so Congressmen, aides, and RNC bigwigs waiting backstage, they don’t go quietly. The First Lady’s Secret Service detail have to intervene to get them to disperse, which only leads to another hitch in the plan when the hotel’s event manager suggests they call an ‘intermission’ of sorts in order to ensure the first responders are able to “reach Ms. Pope unobstructed.”

The last thing, the absolute dead-last thing Liv would want is to be the name at the center of a schedule-changing disruption. She’d have fought it tooth and nail were she not unconscious. Abby and Harrison doing so on her behalf would likely draw even more scrutiny. If they went with the flow now, Harrison would have better luck controlling the tide of the rumor mill later, once the excitement died down. The only person more put out by the sudden last-minute adjustments is the First Lady.

One would need to have been unfamiliar with Mellie Grant’s treatment of Liv in private to mistake the Concerned Christian Housewife front she affected to ask what had happened and whether Olivia would be alright traveling to the hospital alone. The flared nostrils were a dead giveaway, if you knew to look for them.

“Liv will appreciate your concern, Mrs. Grant,” Abby says, in a voice she likes to call, The Chick-fil-A Cashier. “You don’t have to worry, though. I’m gonna ride with her, and Harrison’s going to stay behind and wrap things up here.” For her own amusement, and to calm her nerves, she adds. “I’m sorry to say we weren’t able to catch the latter portion of your speech. Our hands were a bit full.”

Harrison, who should’ve been quicker about getting that woman out of Abby’s airspace, shoots daggers at her as he leads the First Lady over to the Secret Service. Weeks ago, when Liv first told them they were taking on Mellie Grant’s soft endorsement of Susan Ross for the Virginia GOP Senate primary, Abby could have honestly said she had no opinion on the woman she, Stephen, and Quinn now referred to as “Melon,” behind Liv’s back. Her treatment of Olivia had the team split; Stephen and Quinn had her pegged as a racist. Harrison, who made it a point not to put anything past white people, was adamant that Liv wouldn’t be bothered if that was the case, and it was more likely that she owed someone on the Hill a favor. Outwardly, Abby put forth the theory that it was a combination of the two. Privately, she was sure it went even deeper than that.

EMS take their sweet ass time getting to them; which Abby later makes a point of reaming them out for once they finally do show up. It’s the kind of thing for which Liv would’ve clamped a hand over Abby’s mouth, shoved her aside and, through clenched teeth, scolded her into minding her manners and letting the nice EMTs do their job.

Would’ve, were she not semi-conscious and being loaded onto a stretcher. But it was a long-standing rule—as of the past several minutes—that Liv being out of commission gives Abby a free pass to act out.

Harrison, bless him and his superior coping skills, talks the event manager and the lead paramedic into taking Liv out through the corridor, rather than going the more direct route off the stage and through the banquet reception area, where every person in attendance would see her being wheeled away. The necessity of preserving Liv’s privacy at the cost of expediency might have been a harder sell if not for the fact that blood had already begun to stain the lower half of Liv’s white evening gown.

The paramedics take it for granted that Abby will be hitching a ride with them to the hospital, and thankfully don’t give her any grief when she jogs along beside Liv’s stretcher. She waits until they’re locked and loaded in the ambulance and well enough away from anyone who could overhear before addressing them again.

“OK, I’m sure you’ve both seen enough to know this without me having to say—and thank you for not saying it back there where someone could here—but you should know, my friend’s pregnant.”

The EMTs accept the latest piece of information blandly.

“How far along?” the older one asks.

Gripping Olivia’s hand in hers’, Abby answers. “I’m not sure. But can you make sure we go to George Washington? They’ll be expecting us.”

The baby-faced paramedic shrugs and leans over to let the driver know.

**THEN:**

* * *

Olivia’s only just settling into her second (and a half) glass of red at the moment her plans for a quiet evening in are steamrolled by the arrival of the Secret Service. Tom and Hal exchange pleasantries by way of ordering her to pack a bag; she has twenty-five minutes and should expect to be out of town and unreachable for the next three days and three nights. The location to which Olivia’s being abducted—her word—is, for the time being, classified—their word—and will be revealed to her upon her delivery to the undisclosed location. They assure her that the place they’re taking her to will have internet access, but she isn’t permitted to bring her laptop. They confiscate her Android, after she successfully haggles a five-minute grace period to give her enough time to send a group text to Abby, Harrison, Stephen, and Huck, letting them know she’ll be traveling for the next few days but will be checking her email regularly if they need to reach her.

It’s a bad look considering she’s spent the previous week and a half bringing them all on board her next move—a crisis management firm, Olivia Pope & Associates—an idea they were as keen as she to get the ball rolling on. But more than employees, the people Olivia was already starting to refer to privately as her ‘team,’ her five closest friends were the closest thing to family each other had. They would understand; she had enough faith in their faith in her to trust her impromptu trip out of town wouldn’t cause them to doubt her commitment to this new venture, to them. But this is still a bad look, not at all the standard she wants to set going in, and Olivia hates it.

She’s agitated, at being summoned, fetched; like a stick or a bone or a tennis ball, or a _concubine_ —but only just so. More than anything, _she’s relieved_ , and that’s not the two liters of Chateau Lafitte she’s downed this evening, or the insomnia-induced psychosis she’s slipped into following her and Fitz’s last encounter, eight sleepless nights ago.

Her apartment has felt different since that night. It might also be that she feels different inside it. Six of one, as the saying goes.

But there’s this thing: a tingling, an itch, the dull throb of a thousand million pinpricks dotting every pore along the surface of her skin, from the edge of her hairline to the pads of her toes; like static jumping from bedsheets to bare legs; the off-key drumbeat of fingertips to thighs; a dying scream beating her heart into a chokehold. Everywhere. He is everywhere. She’s left the White House because he’s everywhere there, too. He is the White House, and he’s followed Olivia home and left himself all over everything. There’s an empty popcorn bowl on top of her piano because she can’t be in her living room and not, with her eyes, trace chalk silhouettes of every position he’d taken her in, just there, on that spot on the floor by the sofa. The door to the bathroom he’d carried her past stays shut all the time now; a few nights ago and she’d caught herself in the mirror above the sink, in his arms, on the way to her bedroom. She thinks she might never wear her once-preferred pink satin pajamas again. In the evenings, now, she comes home and slips into that ratty Tweety Bird nightshirt, and nothing else; and ignores the voice that demands to know her what she’s hoping for.

Olivia’s run that night back over in her head pretty much on a loop over the past nine days, forensically, like a detective on some network police procedural, a drama in three acts: Act I: The Accusation, Act II: The Climax, and finally, Act III, which Olivia still can’t name. For a week and a half she’s broken the plot down scene by scene looking for the little, blink-and-you-miss-it details, the Easter Eggs, the subliminal messaging in the celuloid dropping hints about the Illuminati.

Fitz on the other side of the door brandishing her letter of resignation, storming in and dropping the bombshell about Verna and Defiance, turning everything on its head. He comes to her a stranger. Anguish and defeat and betrayal didn’t need long to simmer and steeple; they were by then, bone deep, leaving blunt fury to rise to the top and chisel him away into hard lines of heat-glazed marble, everything he was bred to be, had never been, and dreaded becoming.

He fell on her like slate, the bulk of him as cold as the floor against her back; then, a coil, he sprung. Beast, machine, man, stranger, he pounced, and pounded, and tore, and took, and Olivia had cried out and taken it in; welcomed it, even, if it meant he when he was finished he left her as himself, if this was her part to pay in repairing what she’d helped break. Outside herself, she watched her body writhe, more in pain as he took pleasure. Watched felt finger-shaped bruises form in real time around her thighs and wrists and arms. Took shallow breaths that wouldn’t heave fresh bitten breasts through stinging air. Dry-sobbed when rapture was wrenched through her swollen core. Coming hard was one thing, but it had never physically hurt before.

It was worth it. It was owed, like Fitz's hatred, and the certainty in that moment that she was going to live out the rest of her life knowing she betrayed her country, betrayed her conscience, betrayed her judgment, her values, her gut, herself, and the man she loved—loves, will remain in love with, faithlessly. Forever—more than all of those things combined; and that the man she did it for, the love of her life, despised her for it. He would, in the next few moments, slip out of her and out of her life without so much as a backward glance. Leaving her a ruined monument, debauched and graffitied, shivering on the cold hardwood of her living room, condemned to contemplate her role in this story ad infinitum. The liar. The traitor. The whore. The tramp. His mistress.

End Act II, as Olivia had pre-written it with him still inside her.

Of course, Fitz being himself, can always be counted on to throw out the script at the last minute. That unnamed tingling that has taken Olivia over in the days since didn’t start at Act III, but in reviewing the tapes Olivia has identified it as a precursor.

He doesn’t head for the door like he’s supposed to. His presence lingers like an echo, every step he takes reverberating through the floorboards, beating shockwaves into Olivia’s skin, harder and faster the closer he gets. He’s not supposed to lift her in his arms and carry her to bed; take a warm cloth to all the places she’d given him to despoil; dress her in that tacky nightshirt that had been three sizes too big a lifetime ago when her mom had rolled her eyes and bought it from the gift shop for her anyway. The shirt she saves for when she can’t catch a breath and her chest feels ready to cave in and she can’t bring her head out of places it isn’t safe to go—plane crashes, car wrecks, the timbre of her father’s latest threat, Christmas of ’92, the empty facade of weekly Sunday dinners—The times she can’t outrun the need to be held.

Somehow, Fitz knows, without knowing, and that’s not how this is supposed to go.

He gives her what she needs, and when she breaks he gives her more. And then he won’t forgive her, won’t hear an apology, and won’t let her leave him.

It hurts too much to get out of bed the next morning. She’s sore and aching in every place she’d expected to be, which gives her an excuse to lay there all day and think. Her skin feels like it’s humming. She doesn’t know what any of it means.

That night, he calls to tell her that Cyrus is up in arms over her resignation but has resolved to taking it out on the staffers after Fitz threatened to find a new Chief of Staff if he gave her any grief. In a dull, businesslike monotone he’s never used with her before, he tells her not to worry. He tells her to let him know if any reporters come looking to her her for a comment so he can have their press pass revoked. He asks her whether she thinks the White House should be prepared to address the strikes happening in Quebec ahead of the NAFTA summit he leaves for in two days. Cyrus thinks they should leave it alone. Olivia concurs. They hang up.

The next night he calls again. It’s a shorter conversation, his schedule for the day had been light in preparation for his upcoming travels. He’s been drinking. Mellie is fuming because he’s leaving her behind even though the President of Mexico is bringing the Mexican First Lady to the summit. Cyrus is worried it’ll have the public speculating on their marriage again, shifting coverage from the momentum they’ve gained in the first hundred days. Rather than asking Olivia whether she agrees Fitz wants to discuss the rumored mutiny mounting against the Senate Majority Leader that’s sure to be a thorn in his side when he gets back from Canada, and which faction she thinks he should side with. Olivia tells him to trust his gut. He thanks her and, before hanging up, tells her to expect him back the following Thursday.

It’s Thursday. Anticipating a phone call, Olivia receives, instead, a visit from the Secret Service. Her bags are packed in twenty minutes.

✤

Camp David had been her first guess, Olivia didn’t give herself points for getting it in one, however.

Dread and uncertainty have already ebbed away much of the relief that had propelled her forward a few hours ago, reaching their peak as Secret Service led her down a familiar lantern-lit pathway to the front steps of the cabin she’d been assigned during their last visit here and ushering her across the threshold where Fitz stood waiting for her in the center of the room. And then, they were alone.

Or were they? He had, after all, had her brought here under cover of darkness, presumably off the books. Were they in her old cabin to draw on sentiment from one of the high points in their secret relationship, or was the First Family in residence at the president’s cabin? Not that Olivia would have abided spending a long weekend in the vacation home reserved for his family; but still. She no longer had access to the president’s schedule. She knew only what he told her. Her purpose here didn’t require elaboration, but what about his? Was it business or leisure that made him choose Camp David? Was she to hide away on the peripheral of what was, to the rest of the world, a wholesome family camping trip?

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

He seemed agitated. He was all hard lines and rigid bone, unsmiling and wary. He didn’t look exactly happy to see her, and it made Olivia second-guess her route to the question she most needed answered, going for the path of least resistance as opposed to a more direct approach. This was one instance where it wouldn’t do to beg forgiveness later.

“You look like you just got off a plane,” she said glibly.

He nodded, releasing a good bit of the tension in his shoulders through a long exhale. “I went from Air Force One, to the motorcade, to the cabin.”

“Your cabin?”

“ _Your_ cabin.”

Olivia shook her head. “It’s not—“

“—I came here,” Fitz cut her off, impatient. “Straight here. I didn’t pass Go or collect $200.”

Closing the space between them, he smoothed his hands along Olivia’s upper arms and gave her a meaningful look.

“The only cabin that will be occupied over the next three days is this one,” he said.

Olivia hardly had time to process what that meant before she was being spun in an about-face and pulled back against his chest hard enough to knock the air out of them both, and there were lips attacking the juncture of neck and shoulder, and working their way down, nipping, biting. But there was a problem.

The itch hasn’t gone away yet. Of course it hasn’t.

Olivia caught the hand working its way down the buttons of her blouse, refocusing his attentions. “Does Cyrus know about your schedule for the next few days?”

He stared down at her, incredulous. “You seriously want to discuss my Chief of Staff right now?”

“You’re in the middle of the woods with no staff aside from your Secret Service detail, what if there’s an emergency?”

“Burning building or a cat up a tree?”

“You’re not cute,” she said, pulling herself out of his arms so she could glower at him properly. “Where do Mellie and Cyrus think you are right now?”

He glared back. “Have some faith in me, Livvie, for God’s sake! I’m not a child, I know the weight of the proverbial crown on my head.”

“That’s not an answer.”

His jaw tightened. “According to my schedule, I’m on a solo retreat at Camp David to take some time to reflect on the first hundred days of my presidency and on the recent NAFTA summit. Does that satisfy?”

“Did Mellie buy that?”

“Hell if I know what Mellie’s reaction was, she gets my schedule from Lauren.”

“What about Cyrus?”

“Olivia.”

“What?”

“Take off your clothes.”

Even in the haze of afterglow, Olivia’s nerves won’t leave her alone. She’s afraid. Been afraid, she thinks; all along. She loves Fitz. He now hates her. They’re both disgusted with her. They can’t leave each other alone. Stay or go, the resolution was always going to be a Catch-22.

He isn’t any gentler with her than he’d been during their previous encounter. She hurts in places that had been on the mend. Fitz comes with a pained groan that wracks the entire bulk of him. He’s half-covering her, panting into the crook of her neck when she, tentatively, experimentally, wriggles her arm free and cups the back of his head. He rolls away.

Olivia’s cold. She’d taken her clothes off for him. He’d left on everything except his suit jacket. And he’s gone. And she’s found the itch. She’s been so afraid.

Her chest hurts. Burning eyes pop open, expecting there to be someone, something sitting on her, pressing down, down, down. She can’t breathe. It’s in the back of her throat, whatever it is; a grape-seed, an apple core, an avocado pit, a dozen questions she never wanted the answers to.

There’s a washcloth, warm, so warm, mopping at her brow, and under her eyes, her cheeks. Fitz presses her hand to it and motions for her to sit up. He has another one. Olivia’s breath catches. Like before, Fitz dabs the cloth along every place she hurts. She dozes off for a second and when she comes to he’s sliding something over her head. Her nightshirt is at home, she wasn’t sure how he’d react to seeing it, if he’d think she was teasing him. The long-sleeved Navy t-shirt is better. Her arms don’t go through all the way. It feels like a blanket; like her Tweetie shirt had at ten, and she’d like things that fit too big because they made her feel invisible.

She crawls into Fitz’s lap on bruising wrists and throws her arms around him without stopping to make sure—

_Don’t ruin our Sunday dinner, Olivia_

Fitz’s hands cradle her face, the pads of his thumbs brush gently along her cheeks. He asks if she’s okay. Olivia nods.

This is a safe place to be.

“What?”

Shaking her head, Olivia buries her face in the crook of his neck and squeezes her arms around him, tighter, in silent plea for reciprocity, and for him to simply forget whatever thought she’d mistakenly said aloud.

He holds her, like last time. Lets her wrap her legs around his middle and bundle herself in him like before. All this time she’d been so afraid that when they saw each other again, he wouldn’t…

It’s gone; the humming beneath the surface of her skin, the itch she couldn’t scratch; the question she didn’t have the means to ask, until now.

**Author's Note:**

> Tell me what plot points/lines/little scenes you liked and loved, and I'll give you Chapter 2 with the quickness. Comments make my fingers type faster :P


End file.
